Wis[s]e Words

Gary Farber doesn’t get it

Published on May 19, 2002Leave a comment

Yesterday, Gary Farber ranted about reactions to the news that the Bush administration DID know an attack was imminent in early september, even that was likely to involve hijacked airplanes. Unfortunately, he completely misses the point:

CRYSTAL BALL TIME: I’ve made the error of looking at various leftist blogs ranting on about how Bush Should Have Known About 9/11, and He Is All To Blame, because We Had The Information.

Notices Gary doesn’t mention which blogs, so there’s no way of checking for ourselves whether said blogs are talking sense or bullocks. Nice way of Using Capitals For Ridicule as well as good use of the Dreaded Label of “leftist”.

Fine. We now have new warnings. Put up or shut up. Reveal, due to these Warnings, what the next attack will be. It’s As Clear As before 9/11. Or pay attention to the fact that intelligence doesn’t work that way: it analyzes what happened, and what has been heard; it’s not, in fact, a Predictor Of The Future By The Force.

Not that anybody’s been saying that.

What people like Avedon Carol (to mention just one leftist blogger) have been saying is that the attacks were predicted, were not something new or out of the blue (remember the 1993 WTC attack?) and that it was the Bush administration not taking terrorism seriously as a threat that helped make the attacks possible.

And the attacks were predicted, as Glenn Reynolds noted. Then again, you really cannot trust such a loony leftist as Glenn.

(I just looove Gary’s little challenge there. I would even take him up on it, if I could get the keys to the various US intelligence systems.)

Nitwits. You can blame Clinton, or Bush, and each blaming is equally, um, uninformed. And, how do we say in English? Stupid. Or simply partisan. Yeah, it’s all the fault of the last President you don’t like. Snore. Also, God is to blame for my pants tearing. I’m sure it’s terribly comforting to find a source to put blame to.

Now this is just silly. Contrary to what Gary thinks, it is important to know who failed their duties, to have an inquest into why the September 11 attacks had not been prevented. If only to make sure it won’t happen again. If the US leaders have been asleep on the job, I personally would like to know it. Perhaps we could, you know, replace them or at least get them to take their jobs seriously and actually go after the responsible parties, instead of attacking such threats to national security like Cuba and elected Venezuelan presidents.

(Do you notice the way in which Gary compares this wholly justified criticism of Bush with the ravings of the Hate Clinton Brigade, as if the two were equivalent?)

A partisan political source in America, that is. Because that’s what’s important. Domestic quibbles: all important. Mere world-wide enemies trying to kill us: oh, wait, they’re out there, too?

Yeah Gary, that’s all this is, partisan quibbles. Uh huh. How could any criticism of the Fearless Leaders be anything but?

I’m so glad so many people grasp what’s important.

If only this went for Gary as well…

Fortuyn and paedophilia

Published on May 16, 2002Leave a comment

Last Sunday, the Scotsman posted an article accusing Fortuyn of being a powerful advocate or(sic) paedophilia. Several weblogs like e.g. Privateer and Atrios immediately followed up to this article and expressed their outrage at this vile, vile behaviour. Even going so far as to draw, in Privateer’s case totally unfounded conclusions about the Dutch media.

In reality he argued in a column he wrote for the Dutch opinion magazine Elsevier for just a little bit more common sense in dealing with paedophiles. He did that at a time, in late 1999 when paedofilia was very much in the news as a result of various (unrelated) sexual abuse cases coming to the light in a short period and there was a lot of free floating angst about it.

He started his article by reminiscing about how he himself used to “play doctor” when he was young and how that was dealt with sensible by his mother, without too much fuzz. He then contrasted this with the current denial of any sort of sexuality for children. As an example of the dangers of this, he offers that case in the US where a small boy rubbed himself against his little sister and got treated as a sex offender.

In his view paedophilia is like homosexuality or heterosexuality: a sexual preference you’re born with and cannot change. This means of course that a paedophile’s sexual urges will not disappear. He or she will always be sexually attracked to children. Therefore, there will always be the danger that a paedophile will act on their instincts; even prison may not deter them.

Fortuyn then tells how the US handles this problem of recidivism. In the US when a convicted paedophile is released from prison he has to register with the police where he lives and this information is made known to the public. This, he argues leads to mob justice: in the US (suspected) paedophiles are chased out of their homes, beaten up or worse because they cannot hide and start a new life. He warns that this could also happen in the Netherlands, if the same sort of legislation becomes law.

Pim Fortuyn then recalls the late seventies and early eighties, when paedophilia was no longer a taboo subject, but openly discussed as something that may not always be wrong, depending on circumstance. This was largely due to the efforts of then PvdA senator and paedophile Brongersma, who for years had fought for acceptance of paedophilia as not always being automatically wrong or harmful. In the sexual climate of the seventies, after the liberation of sex by the Pill and the growing acceptance of homosexuality as something normal, the existence of children as sexual beings gradually won terrain and this combined with Brongersma efforts led to paedophiles being treated more sympathetically. Less emphasis on the paedophile as a child raping monster and more on paedophilia as a sort of mental illness, as a condition which in itself was no reason for condemnation, but as something a paedophile must learn to live with within the boundaries of the law. This model was largely abandoned in the late eighties for again the paedophile as monster. Fortuyn laments this and pleads for more open discussion, for rebreaking of the taboo.

This does not make Pim Fortuyn a advocate of child molesters. It makes him somebody concerned with the black and white, emotional way the subject of paedophilia is treated in public discourse. You can disagree with him on this, but that’s not a good reason to subject him to a posthumous smear campaign. Yes, quotes from this article taken out iof context do sound bad, but do not show the whole picture. It is clear to me that Fortuyn is not advocating paedophilia, let alone actual sex with children, as well as a return to the more enlightened viewpoints of the seventies.

After the elections the fun will start…

Published on May 16, 2002Leave a comment

I did promise to spend some time looking at coalition possibilities, didn’t I? To recap, the election results were as following:

Party	2002 elections	1998 elections
CDA	43	29
Lijst Pim Fortuyn	26	–
VVD	23	38
PvdA	23	45
Groen Links	11	11
SP	9	5
D66	7	14
ChristenUnie	4	5
SGP	2	3
Leefbaar Nederland	2	–

Looking at the above figures, what are now realistic options for a coalition, keeping in mind it has to have at least 76 seats to have a majority in parlement. Meaning that a new government needs the support of at least three parties, possibly four. Four party coalitions are rare however as well as difficult to keep together. If we look at it realistically, there are now three coalitions possible: 1) CDA-LPF-VVD, 2) CDA-LPF-PvdA or 3) CDA-VVD-PvdA of which the first one is the most probable.

CDA-LPF-VVD

This coalition would be rightwing, with ironically enough the CDA, the christendemocrats as the left most party. VVD and CDA are coalition partners of old, having governed together for most of the 1980ties. LPF is somewhat of a wild card, having lost focus with the death of their leader, but their policies as stated in Fortuyn’s book De puinhopen van Acht Jaar Paars [1] have some similarity with those of the VVD. This would lead to an even more neoliberal economic course, with the CDA cast in the role of the defender of the public interest and the weaker members of society.

Lots of tension between the CDA’s more conservative, christian[2] right of center policies and the VVD’s and LPF’s more neoliberal freemarket rightwing policies as well as a strong, leftwing opposition from D66, PvdA, Groen Links and SP may mean an early end to this coalition…

CDA-LPF-PvdA

A more left of center coalition, though leaning more to the right then the old Paars coalition of VVD, PvdA and D66 did. The counterweight of D66 against the VVD is gone and replaced by a party to the right even of the VVD. Less plausible then the CDA-LPF-VVD coalition if only for the animosity betweent he PvdA and LPF. The PvdA was the party attacked the most by Pim Fortuyn and responded by mounting an unheard of for the Netherlands hard and at times personal campaign against him. After the murder, both the LPF and a substantial part of the electorate held the PvdA and especially its leader, Ad Melkert personally responsible for Fortuyn’s death. Not a good sign for a fruitful alliance between the two parties.

Furthermore, the PvdA is also the party which lost the most during the elections. They went from 45 seats to just 23, a greater loss then that of the VVD. To reward them for it with participation in government is more than dodgy. It certainly wouldn’t restore the confidence of the public in the political establishement.

CDA-VVD-PvdA

This is the worst of the three possible coalitions and really only possible if the LPF collapsed or splintered even before a new government is formed. It wouldn’t take into account the voters’ wishes at all and may permanently damage their (our) trust in politics. Riots in the streets if this one happens without the LPF disintegrating. It also rewards the losers of the election instead of the winners.

Other possibilities?

Not many. There may be a possibility that one of the smaller, leftwing parties joins a CDA-LPF-VVD coalition to balance it more to the centre, but experience teaches that this is hellish on the party in question.
Every time D66 was in power, they have been punished for it at the next elections, simply because as a smaller party they carried not enough weight to push through their own visions. The rare occusion when they
did manage to achieve something, the bigger parties took the credit…

More thoughts on this will follow.

[1] The Debris of Eight Years of Purple, the old coalition being called Paars, “purple” because of its mixture of the red PvdA, the blue VVd and green D66.

[2] with which I don’t mean the sort of fundamentalist Christianity y’all may be familiar with in the States, but the older traditional Christianity as defender of the weak and
safekeeper of traditional ways of life, without this being codewords for bigotry or intolerance.

Tougher than the rest

Published on May 16, 2002Leave a comment

A group of New Jersey activists wants Bruce Springsteen to run for senator. The group called “Independence for New Jersey” has the guidance of Doug Friedline, who was a campaign aide to Jesse Ventura in the 1998 Minnesota governoral elections. Springsteen has not been contacted yet.

I wonder if he would be interested. Many of his songs have been political after all, from his cover of Woody Gurthie’s This Land is your Land to Born in the USA and American Skin. He always seemed to me to be an old fashioned sort of blue collar Democrat, it would be interesting to see what and how he would do in real politics.

I would vote for him.

We Won!

Published on May 15, 2002

Just came back from the SP election party. As it looks now, we’ve more or less doubled our seats in Parlement, from five seats in 1998 to at least nine, possibly ten now. In Amsterdam we got just short of eleven percent of the votes, which was incredible.

Apart from us, the other big two winners were the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) who got 26, setting the record for most sears won by a new party in an parlementary election and the CDA, who went from 29 to 43 (!) seats, becoming by far the biggest party, followed by the LPF. The big losers were the three government parties PvdA, from 45 to 23, VVD, from 38 to 23 and D66, from 14 to 8. The other left wing party, Groen Links also lost one seat, going from 11 to 10 seats. Also “losing” big was Leefbaar Nederland, who once were thought to win as much seats as LPF did now, but who now got only two seats, the result of their principled decision to kick Fortuyn out of their party.

So what does this all mean? Is this a move to the right, as television pundits repeated constantly? Or is there more to it?

I think there is. This was not as much a move to the right as it was a punishment of a coalition which managed to lose almost all voter sympathy over the last two years or so. People were sick and tired of Paars, of the way the three coalition partners stifled debate and wanted something new and exciting, something that would break open debate again. At first this was Leefbaar Nederland, but with the entry of Pim Fortuyn, he became the crowbar which forced open Dutch politics. In my opinion, only he was able to do it, because the other alternatives, like CDA were seen as part of the Den haag establishment or like my own party SP and Groen Links, but also the Christenunie too much of a fringe party. There has always been a tradition of new parties doing well in elections when established parties became too arrogant (D66 started out that way) and LPF fitted in nicely. What is new is the margin with which they won, probalby explained by the combination of revulsion of Paars, the charisma of Fortuyn as well as the populistic message he brought of simle answers to complex problems.

It’s tempting to ask what would’ve happened if Fortuyn was still alive. Personally I think his party would’ve become even bigger as I think a lot of people who would’ve voted for him saw what a nitwits the rest of the party were and voted for others. The CDA, the christendemocrats profited from this, picking up Fortuyn voters as did the VVD perhaps, not as much in winning voters from them as in stopping losing voters to them. PvdA otoh and also Groen Links were I think damaged by the witchhunt against the left after Fortuyn’s murder, losing votes to CDA and LPF. For the SP, it mattered less, we stayed mostly out of it. The fact that we nearly doubled is also a sign that it wasn’t just a battle of left versus right wing parties.

I had intended to speculate about possible coalitions now as well but a) it’s late and b) I’m not
entirely sober anymore so I’ll save it till later.